Jung Rhythm

It's inevitable, once a game becomes popular there will be a herd of copycats. Such is the case with Jung Rhythm, a rather lame rip off of Parappa the Rapper. Gone are the innovative character designs, graphical style and catchy tunes replaced with some of the most god awful characters to grace a video game, a horribly derivative graphical style and some rather bad music.

If you haven't played Parappa before, a good way to describe it is by calling it a musical version of simon says. A character will perform some actions (including singing the song) and then you have to replicate them all to the tune of the music. How could one ruin such a simple concept? For one, the music just isn't as engaging or inventive as that found in other games of this style. The first song you encounter in the game is simply too painful to listen to. You and your mother are in the Kitchen preparing a meal via song. Your character sounds like she is burping the words. Who could've thought that making breakfast would sound so disgusting? The dance lesson in Stage 2 is a little better but it all goes downhill from there. The hill is also kind of small, considering there are only 6 normal stages in the game.

In the story mode you progress through the stages and watch short CG videos between each stage. The CG is full screen and rather grainy and the characters are just plain ugly. You are restricted to one character in Story mode, probably the ugliest and most horribly untalented one of the bunch. As I said, her voice sounds like someone burping. There is a two player mode that allows you to play as any of the other characters, but there is no way to play this mode against an AI opponent. So, if you want to try out one of the other characters, you better have a friend around who doesn't mind subjecting themself to this travesty.

Jung Rhythm is all rather amateurish. It may be the only game of it's kind on Saturn, but that in no way makes up for this sorry excuse for a game. I'm a big fan of the Rhythm Action genre as a whole, and that includes the Simon Says style of games but Jung Rhythm just did nothing for me. There was nothing to like. The characters look like something a 2 year old could come up with, and not in the cute charming kind of way. No, more like the "Be gone evil work of Satan!" type of thing. Most importantly though, the music is just bleh. For a Rhythm Action game to succeed it's gotta have a good soundtrack, something that Jung Rhythm is severely lacking. Avoid this piece of junk. I know some of you will still be curious. After all, I still tracked this down after being told how bad it was. Trust me when I say it's bad. Really bad. I don't care how big a fan of the genre you are, Jung Rhythm will not provide you with any joy. Don't say I didn't warn you. Jung Rhythm? More like Dung Rhythm!

©2003 Ed Finnegan

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